The Chromebook Pixel Review
by Jason Inofuentes on May 31, 2013 8:00 AM ESTDisplay
Matching the fit and finish of the body is the Pixel’s display. The popularity of larger “retina” displays has left us with something of a glut of HiDPI content to ogle. It’s something quite odd to sit quite so close to a notebook screen and be entirely unable to discern any individual pixels. Users of the rMBP may be used to this experience, but for me it was a treat to spend so much time with such a nice display after a few years with my 13” MBP. Pixel density isn’t everything, though; what we’re really looking at is an arrangement of colors and so color accuracy is our new obsession. Our displays guru, Chris Heinonen, has updated our workflow for evaluating displays and the results are nothing short of incredible. Here he’ll explain what’s changed and what you’re looking at; let us know what you think and please do click on the images to get a good look at them in full-size.
Starting with this review, we're introducing the Color Comparator tool from CalMAN, which they just introduced into version 5.1 of their software. Most often in reviews you will see the DeltaE value for colors that we are sampling, which provides a numerical idea of how far off from ideal a sample is. Anything below 1 you can't see when they are side-by-side, and anything below 3 you can't see while in motion. While this is a very useful tool to see how accurate a color is, it doesn't provide someone with a visual idea of the error.
The color comparator tool shows the ideal colors right next to the actual colors, so you can see where the errors are. Even with an uncalibrated display you can get a good idea of the amount of error that is present. Of course, the more accurate your display is, the more accurate the differences will appear to be, but it still provides a more real-world example. It also lets you possibly compare two displays where the dE values might be 0.7 and 1.0 and see if you can actually tell a difference, or if you are splitting hairs at that point. More information can be found on this tool here http://store.spectracal.com/colorcomparator but hopefully this proves useful to our readers.
Color gamut
Saturations
GMB
| Chromebook Pixel |
13-inch rMBP (uncalibrated) |
|
| CCT Avg | 6442 | 6632 |
| Grayscale Avg | 7.132 | 1.7825 |
| Gamut Avg | 6.8234 | n/a |
| Saturations Avg | 7.0927 | 2.1663 |
| GMB Avg | 5.7664 | 2.4521 |
There's no denying that the 13-inch rMBP has a great panel and the dE values are in the realm of undetectable in motion, and nearly undetectable in static images. The intention here is to calibrate it for color accuracy, so that image professionals can get to work as soon as they open the box. The Pixel... doesn’t hit quite so solidly. From our chat with Caesar, we know that Google’s target was a warmer display than the rMBP, and so the CCT coming it at just under the ideal at 6500k makes sense. The dE figures, though show that while the average is closer to ideal, the individual colors miss in a more noticeable way. In this case, most of the colors are rather undersaturated, a contrast to Apple’s slight oversaturation. The result isn’t exactly unappealing, it’s just not accurate. In use some vibrant colors appear more vivid against the desaturated representations of other colors. This inaccuracy does cost the Pixel when looked at by the discerning eye of a professional; most users, though, aren't likely to spare a second thought on it.
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cjb110 - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Excellent review, would be perfect for my intend usage...just need to be able to afford one:)Adhib - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Why don't you just get one of the Samsung Chromebooks?jeffkro - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
They're ok, but the screen resolution kind of stinks.xyzzy1 - Friday, June 14, 2013 - link
I'd rather buy the mackbook and run windows on it. Overall better specs and better overall build quality.Belard - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
Wow... I know I read it before... but still... the thing has far higher resolution than my 24" display.Even thou its a desktop and twice the distance away from my eyes... I can see the jaggy pixels on my 24" monitor that I cannot see with my Android phone or a modern tablet.
Its good to see something going against the dead-end Windows platform.
Interesting thou... and funny in a way, Dailytech is a malware site?
damianrobertjones - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
What? 'Dead-end windows platform'? Yeah ok.This might have a higher resolution than your 24" screen but which has more 'working' space...
Alexvrb - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
This might compete with expensive Apple hardware, but it's not a direct competitor to Windows-based Ultrabooks/Ultrathins. Maybe if it was $500 cheaper. The display is awesome, the chassis is pretty, but that's it. The memory is on the low side, and is not upgradeable. The internal storage (fairly fast) is very limited and also not replaceable. The CPU is inferior even to the one in the Air. Etc.There's little chance anyone who has the word "affordable" in their vernacular would buy this over an Ultrabook. I don't personally think browserOS is all that great anyway, but if you're going to buy a Chromebook the cheap ones are the way to go. If Google was really out to help the open source community (like they pretend to be, meanwhile using them like any other tool), they would have built their own flavor of Linux with Google Happyware integrated and would use that instead.
Selden - Saturday, June 1, 2013 - link
Alexrvb: The CPU spec is identical to that in the 13" Macbook Air: 1.8 i5 @ 1.7gHz, with Intel® HD Graphics 4000.jeffkro - Monday, June 3, 2013 - link
Have you used chrome OS? Its extremely lightweight and doesn't need much in the way of cpu and memory. Its even blazing fast on a celeron 847.JDG1980 - Friday, May 31, 2013 - link
"So, how do you cope 4 million pixels and just 4GB RAM? In this case, the first step is to render all pages at 1280 x 800, unless HiDPI assets are available. The final product is upscaled to the full 2560 x 1600, but the memory doesn’t take nearly the punishing you might expect; unless, of course, every site you visit has HiDPI assets."So you're not even getting sharper text, just blurry low-res text upscaled? That sucks. What's the point of having a HiDPI display at all?
I'm not at all impressed with the notion of a browser-only OS. It is not and never will be enough for serious users. And I don't want Google to be monitoring every single thing I do on my local PC. "The cloud" can go take a flying leap.